Today I Hail you Boogeyman.
Today I’ll remember the first time your acronym tied itself to my Gay Identity before I could even fully develop it. Today I remember the many names you’ve had: Saint’s Disease, Gay Cancer, GRIDS, House in Venice, Gift.
Today I’ll admire how elegantly you use silence to multiply, how neglect is your breeding ground. I’ll think back on the cocktail parties and potential romances that were ground to a screeching halt with the mere mention of your name. I’ll wonder how, after 30 years, the fear of you still has no name. No single word to describe the panic of a broken condom, the uneasiness of a regular flu, the sweaty palms of an HIV test. All while you changed our language, even added a few words. You made “natural sex” into “unsafe sex,” anyone wanting to have it into a "slut,” you boiled entire people down to “-” or “+” signs.
Today I’m in awe that the damage you can do to a body does not compare to what you can do to a person’s self-worth. Today I’ll recall the suicidal binges and sexual outbursts that followed the seroconversions of my chosen family. Today I’ll even admit that you and Meth still have really great thing going. I didn’t think it would last but you guys still dance really, really well together.
Today I’ll lament on the spaces you closed, the bathhouses, bars and backrooms that shut their doors in a cloud of bleach. All the books, paintings, films and speeches that were never created and the advice from older men that my generation so desperately needs but will never get.
Today I’ll even laugh at the blue balls you gave me in my 20’s and the terrible biohazard tramp stamp tattoos you made cool for a while.
Today I’ll give you the recognition you deserve in the way that other cultures have respected their own holocausts, genocides, plagues and natural disasters.
But Virus, you get one day from me.
My other 364 days are dedicated to fucking you up. To talking, asking, risking all of it with my community, to doing everything in our power so that one day every little queer will know a lifetime without you.
-Leo Herrera (2015) #WorldAIDSDay
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